Many companies produce tracking devices that have the ability to emit Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals (“tracker devices”). These tracker devices are usually small pieces of hardware that may be affixed to larger objects to allow them to be detected by computing devices equipped with radio scanners, and particularly ones that have BLE radios (e.g., smartphones). Personal devices to which tracker devices may be affixed commonly include keys, phones, wallets, purses, water bottles, tablet computers, or any other personal devices a user risks misplacing or losing that they wish to keep track of. Enterprises can also use tracker devices to locate company assets, such as tools, movable equipment, vehicles, computing devices, or any other valuable resources.
The companies that produce tracker devices often have proprietary hardware that pairs with a proprietary computing device application (e.g., a smartphone application), in order to scan for one or more of the proprietary tracker devices when they are in scanning range of a smartphone, which is typically between 30 to 100 feet. Additionally, many of the applications include a function known as “crowd-source location,” which enables a user to locate their tracker devices that are lost or otherwise outside the range of the user's own smartphone. This crowd-source location function works by utilizing the smartphone applications of other users who also own the same brand of proprietary hardware. For example, a company called ABC Tracker may make a BLE hardware tracking device (ABC Tracker Device) and a corresponding tracking application (ABC Tracker App). User A may have her ABC Tracker device attached to her wallet, which she loses at a restaurant. If User B, who also owns at least one ABC Tracker device and has the ABC Tracker App, happens to be in that restaurant, User B's smartphone could detect the presence of User A's wallet and allow User A to see (on her ABC Tracker App) that her wallet has been found by User B. In order for some crowd-source location systems to work, the owner of the lost device typically must designate a particular item as “lost” through an application interface. Other users of the app typically must have the app running, at least in the background, and have the app set to a permission setting that allows it to detect others' lost items. The information from each user's app is usually sent to a cloud service that relays the information received at the “finder's” smartphone to the user who lost the item.
With the proliferation of companies that make tracking devices and applications, and the increase in the number of users and number of individual devices that each individual user tracks, a number of improvements to the functionality of crowd-source location are desired. Several challenges exist in terms of widespread adoption, reliability of information, accuracy of scanning, and resource utilization, to name a few.